Claire's Boys
by Stacey M. Powers
Summary: This story is very AU. It assumes that Claire never gave Reed up for adoption and that Mac adopted him following Mac’s marriage to Claire. I played with the timeline a bit, but I tried to stay close to the show’s.


Claire's Boys

By

Stacey M. Powers

Author's Note: I do not own these characters of course, they belong to Anthony Zuiker and Co. This story is very_very _AU. It assumes that Claire never gave Reed up for adoption and that Mac adopted him following Mac's marriage to Claire. I played with the timeline a bit, but I tried to stay close to the show's. Just in case, I've included it below to avoid any confusion. So relax and enjoy.

Timeline: 1984, Claire Conrad gives birth to Reed Conrad

1992, Mac Taylor is honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps

1993, Mac Taylor meets Claire Conrad

1994, Mac and Claire marry and Mac adopts Reed

1997, Mac gets a transfer from the Chicago PD to the NYPD Crime Lab

Chicago, IL October, 1997

Mac Taylor entered the house he shared with his wife and adopted son. He loved the sounds he heard when he walked through the door. Claire was at the sink washing dishes and swaying and singing along with Etta James. He stepped up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist he put his lips right next to her ear and whispered; "I could make you a star."

Claire laughed and turning her head, she gave him a hello kiss.

"Oh gross. You're kissing _again_?"

Mac chuckled. "Hello to you too Reed."

"Hi Dad." Twelve year old Reed Conrad Taylor dropped himself into one of the kitchen chairs and sighed gustily.

"Yes dear?" Claire turned laughing blue eyes on her son.

"Mom, I'm _starving_." He insisted with all the dramatic flair due someone his age.

Now Claire did laugh aloud. She couldn't help herself. "Come here you."

Reed loped up to his mother.

"Open up."

Rolling eyes that were so much like his mother's, Reed opened his mouth wide and stuck out his tongue.

Mac struggled not to laugh as Claire stared down her son's throat consideringly.

"Hmm." She said finally. "Yeah. Definitely empty."

"Kinda like your head." Mac wrapped his arm around Reed's neck and gave the boy's dark curls a tousle.

"C'mon Dad!" Reed whined. Though he enjoyed every minute of the horseplay with Mac, he felt that he had to put up the front. It was part of the game.

Mac released the boy, clapping him on the shoulder as he did so.

"Okay then you two, wash your hands then have a seat. Lasagna tonight."

"All right!" Reed loved his mother's lasagna.

"Race ya." Reed offered.

"You better tie your shoe first." Mac warned.

"Yeah right Dad! Lame, very lame." The boy took off and just when he thought he had Mac beat, he had to think again.

"The winner and still champ!" Mac gloated.

"Yeah, yeah."

When all three of them were seated at the kitchen table in front of a big bowl of salad, a baking dish of lasagna, warm bread and a glass of milk for Reed and red wine for Mac and Claire, the daily dinner conversation began.

"Mom, I need to go to the library this weekend."

"Sure. I have some errands to run too. I'll drop you off for about an hour. Will that be enough?"

"That's cool. Thanks."

"How was your day?" Claire inquired of her husband.

"Fine."

Sensing that there was definitely more to it than that, Claire nudged a little. "Wow! That's great! Isn't that great Reed?"

"Yeah. Great."

"Something did happen today."

"I kind of figured as much."

"Maybe we should talk about it later."

"Mac…"

"It's…We're going to need to talk about it."

Claire was immediately serious. She knew that he meant just the two of them. A post bedtime discussion. "Okay."

Reed knew what it meant too and he began pushing his lasagna around on the plate.

"Reed, it's not that I don't want to tell you about it, it's just that…Well…Okay then. I've been offered a promotion."

"Mac! That's terrific!" When he didn't return her smile, Claire grew serious again. "Oh. There's more."

"Yeah. The promotion involves a move. To New York."

"City?!" Reed piped up.

"Yes. I'd be running the Crime Lab."

"That's…Well…I mean…" Claire was clearly at a loss for words and Mac didn't blame her. The move would involve leaving family and friends behind and Reed had just started the seventh grade. It would mean taking him out of a school he loved, where he was doing well.

"I haven't given an answer yet. I have until Monday."

"But you want to go. Don't you?"

Mac couldn't help feeling that Reed's tone was accusatory.

"Whether or not I want to go, this affects all of us. It's a family decision."

"You weren't going to tell me."

"Reed, I don't like your tone. I think you should excuse yourself and go to your room until you learn that you need to be respectful of both your mother and me."

"But…"

"Reed." Mac didn't raise his voice, he never did, but he would get that tone and his green eyes would become steely and Reed could see the Marine that Mac had been.

"Yessir." Reed rose from his chair, pushing it in and shuffled off to his bedroom.

When he was gone, Claire, who had been silent throughout this exchange, looked at her husband. "You do want to go."

"It's an excellent opportunity."

"That's really not an answer, but it's all the answer I need." She reached out and grasped his hand. "I'll go talk to Reed."

He turned his hand and grasped hers. "I'll talk to him." With that, he stood and followed the boy.

With a shake of her head, Claire took the lasagna to the stove, covered the pan with foil and popped it into the still-warm oven to keep it from getting cold. Going back to her seat, she finished her salad and sipped at her wine. When Claire Conrad met Mac Taylor he had just left the Marines and joined the Chicago PD, rising quickly through the ranks he didn't take long to make detective. After a year of dating, Claire and Mac married and Mac adopted Reed making the family they'd become legal and formal. Claire had been amazed at how quickly Mac and Reed had taken to one another. It was as if each of them was waiting for the other. Now, their little family was facing its first real dilemma.

Mac arrived outside Reed's closed bedroom door. He could hear the earsplitting rock coming from the other side. Mac shook his head. It was Reed's "leave me the hell alone" music. Though the boy would never actually say those words to his stepfather, Mac had been a teenage boy once and he knew the ropes, a lot better than Reed would have ever believed. Despite Claire's rosy view of the relationship between her husband and her son, the bond they had forged took time and work. Reed, though he was only nine when Mac and Claire started dating, was extremely protective of his mother and used to being the man of the house. He looked at Mac with a wary eye at first. As the boy and man grew to know one another, however, respect and eventually affection followed.

Mac knocked.

The music stopped leaving only its echo in Mac's head.

Reed came to the door and opened it. "Hi." He all but shuffled his feet as he moved aside so Mac could enter.

The man suppressed a sigh at the state of the boy's room, reminding himself yet again that he had once been a teenage boy before the Marines had made a man out of him. He sat on the bed, the only relatively uncluttered spot in the room. "I want to talk to you Reed."

"I'm sorry." The apology, though automatic, was nevertheless sincere.

That and the way Reed stood before Mac as if expecting him to render judgment from on high made Mac sad. He thought they were past this. Mac knew he could be intimidating and it had served him well over the years, but he loved Reed as if the boy was of his blood. "Have a seat son." Mac gentled his voice as he patted the mattress beside him.

Reed sat as bidden.

"You don't need to apologize for feeling the way you do. I appreciate your apology, but I just want to make sure you understand why you needed to give it. Do you understand?"

"Yessir. I was disrespectful to you and Mom."

"You were and you're forgiven, at least by me. I think you should apologize to your Mom when you go back downstairs."

"I will."

"Good. Do you want to come down now and finish dinner? We'll talk about this job offer."

Reed nodded a touch gloomily.

"No sense in letting your Mom's famous lasagna go to waste huh?" Mac ruffled Reed's hair.

The ghost of a smile snuck through. "No way."

Chicago, IL Christmas, 1997

Mac kissed his wife again. He hated to leave, almost as much as he hated the sixteen hour drive ahead of him. After much discussion two months before, the Taylor family collectively decided that Mac would move on ahead to New York, find an apartment and get settled and Claire and Reed would follow him when the school year was over. It would be a long seven and a half months, but Mac would drive to Chicago as often as he could and Claire and Reed even had plans to go to New York during Spring Break to check out their new home.

"I wish you could at least stay tonight." Claire smoothed her hands over Mac's coat.

"I do too, but you know I've got to get started. I have to be back at work day after tomorrow."

"Why don't you stay tonight and fly back tomorrow?"

"That's not what we agreed."

Claire's blue eyes took on the same quality as her son's did when he was feeling particularly stubborn. "Forget the agreements and the plans…"

Mac really _really_ wished he could, but he knew that if the plan was thrown out after only two months, the next five would go from being difficult to hellish. Not to mention _very_ expensive. "No, now you know we don't have the money for that."

Claire sighed. "I know, I just miss you so much."

"I miss you too, but only five more months and you and Reed will be in New York with me and this will all just fade away."

"I can't wait."

"Neither can I."

Claire watched as Mac drove away and she swiped at the tears on her cheeks. He was right. This was the best way for all of them and they had to stick to the plan.

Reed sat at the top of the stairs in the shadows where he knew his mother wouldn't be able to see him. Watching his dad leave made the boy sad, and watching his mom cry made it even worse. He knew they were doing this for him. They'd made it sound so great, even a bit like an adventure, when they first talked about it. Now, now it was just hard and it hurt twice as much to know they were doing it for him.

"Mom."

Claire jumped at her son's quiet voice. "Reed! I thought you were asleep."

"No. I saw Dad leave." He could see that she was holding the tears back, trying to be strong for him as she nodded her head. "Mom," he began again. "Maybe we should just go ahead and move."

Claire looked at her boy. He'd just become a teenager a few days before and he was growing like a weed. Even with all that, he still looked like her little boy standing there in the kitchen wearing his navy blue pj's and socks with his dark curls as unruly as ever and his blue eyes bleary.

"Have a seat honey." She gestured to one of the kitchen chairs and sat down in the one next to him, putting her arm around his shoulders. "Sweetie, this really is the best way. I have to train someone new at work and you don't want to start a new school in the middle of the year. Your dad is still kind of getting his footing with his new job and even though we miss him very much and he misses us, like he said, only five more months and you and I will be in New York with him. You'll see, it'll fly by."

New York City, June 1998

The five months didn't exactly fly by, but they were busy and with visits that were as regular as the family could manage, they were livable. The spring visit made both Claire and Reed even more eager to begin their new life in this strange and wonderful city. Now that they were here, Reed wanted to do everything at once.

Mac chuckled and told him to pace himself, New York wasn't going anywhere.

It sure felt like it was though. Reed thought Chicago was full of things to occupy him, but that was nothing compared to his new home. It was almost as if he could feel it rushing past him at a million miles an hour.

Their first weekend together, Mac took Reed and Claire to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Reed had heard stories of the fabled stadium of course, but it had been nothing compared to the first hand experience. They'd been to games at Wrigley Field, but even that hallowed house couldn't equal "the house that Ruth built." Mac bought him a hot dog and a pennant and they yelled at the ump and kept score.

That evening, Reed wrote about the experience in the journal he began keeping on his thirteenth birthday on which occasion he'd proudly informed his parents that he was going to be a journalist when he grew up.

Over the next three years, the Taylor family made their New York apartment a home. The NYPD Crime Lab under Mac's supervision became one of the most successful in the country. Claire enjoyed her job with a high level investment firm in one of the World Trade Centers and Reed loved his school, making friends, getting terrific grades and working on the school paper.

New York City, Labor Day, 2001

"Come on Reed!" Mac shouted in the direction of his son's room. "That boy could give slow lessons to a snail." He complained to Claire as he packed blankets and frisbees and various and sundry other beach items in a big canvas bag.

Claire smiled around the valve of the beach ball she was blowing up.

Sixteen year old Reed, now a lanky 5'8", came running into the room. He was wearing a light gray tee shirt, black swim trunks and black beach shoes, his own bag of beach items slung over one shoulder and sunglasses on a string swinging around his neck. "Yeah Dad?"

"Are you going to be ready to go sometime this year?"

"I'm ready now."

"Well good. Let's go then."

The Taylors drove to the beach and spent the day swimming, sunning, building sandcastles and playing ball and frisbee. Reed joined a beach volleyball game while Mac cooked hamburgers on a little portable grill and Claire read her book.

By the time they drove home they were tired, but it was a good tired.

A week and a day later the world around the Taylor family and millions of other Americans shattered.

The End


End file.
